President Barack Obama pledged to modernize the government fleet, and he has done just that…though many of these new, fuel-efficient cars aren’t American. In fact, 54% of the Obama Administration’s fleet of alternatively fueled vehicles come from Asian brands.
The Asian brands that make up a bulk of U.S. government fleets are Hyundai Motor Co, Honda Motor Co, Toyota Motor Corporation, and Mitsubishi Motors Corporation.
The Obama administration set a goal of purchasing only alternatively fueled vehicles for its fleet by 2015. They have been purchasing alternatively fueled vehicles since 2009 by the thousands. However, their purchases of these vehicles has been decreasing for years. Sales of these vehicles was 8139 in 2009, and dropped to 6,467 in 2010, it then dropped to 2,645 in fiscal 2011. In 2012, the government purchased just 1,801 hybrid vehicles, making up about 3.6% of the more than 50,000 vehicles purchase by the government last year.
It is certainly true that the U.S government should practice what it encourages, and use alternatively fueled vehicles as well to set an example, however, they don’t favor American cars as much as they used to. The Hyundai Sonata Hybrid has replaced the Ford Fusion hybrid as the most popular green car in government fleets.
One of the reasons stated for this is that the Fusion was not available in large quantities at the time as anew Fusion hybrid was coming out. The same was said for the Ford C-Max hybrid, though there is no mention of the Chevy Volt, another popular hybrid vehicle.
It’s worth asking…is the Obama administration backtracking on its hybrid fleet pledge? Is the 2015 goal even possible anymore?
Source: Bloomberg.com
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